In my first four weeks here, I have heard of only two houses being given that title - one in which there was no wall to support the chimney, the other in which a family refused to hold up their end of the deal (mainly by providing workable mud) and had to be left alone until they could take the project seriously. Then today three other volunteers and I unwittingly entered a home that would win the title of "sad house" from all the others.
There were two Duke volunteers and two new arrivals, who we were supposed to engage in on-the-spot training. Jaime, our boss, led us to a house where we were not immediately granted admission. We stood back as Jaime yelled through the thin wooden door in Quechua until we gained entrance. We walked in and were met by an old man leaning on a cane. One eye was white with blindness and the other I suspect had also failed, as it neither moved nor focused. He had a a small smile on his face as we delicately crept around him -at Jaime's request that we took extra special care not to bump into his frail figure.
And then we were on our own.
Usually, the volunteers try to work alongside the stove recipient. My favorite stove was one in which the husband - who was perhaps younger than I - eagerly climbed onto the roof to cut the hole (usually one of our people has to do that) while we built the stove below. His wife found us whatever else we needed, and our breaks consisted of playing with their 6 month old baby in the yard. Yet this stove was vastly different. It wasn't that the recipient didn't help, it's that he couldn't. Our efforts to speak Spanish to him came to no avail, and I repeated the one phrase I knew in Quechua ("I am fine") over and over again throughout the morning so that he knew we weren't ignoring him. With difficulty we had to search out every material that usually is provided upon request and when we finally began we had to start not on the actual stove, but on building up the wall for the chimney with cumbersome and back breaking adobe bricks. This consisted of choosing a brick from the pile outside, and (with the help of a pick) separating it from its brothers. Then, haul it inside, hack away at it with the pick another time until it seems the right size, wet it, and finally hoist it up to another volunteer standing on the stove platform so they can use copious amounts of mud to stick it to the brick that lies underneath. The ground team and the platform team sweated equally, but the worst part came when we had to make more mud. As one of the new volunteers hacked away at the pile of dirt above the mud basin we heard a shout - "We've got ants!"
Thinking it was merely a few stray insects I ignored the call and continued to work on the wall, only to see out of the corner of my eye the older gentleman ambling across the room. I called to him to ask him what he was doing, and thus found out that he was quite deaf. The commotion outside continued so I followed the man out the door and found that the ants were a bigger problem after all- our mud basin was built at the edge of an anthill that came up to my chest. At this moment our attention was drawn again to the man, who had been making his way to an outhouse that we had failed to notice, hidden 20 feet away behind foliage. His cane was slipping on the underbrush, and he was struggling over the brick that we had unknowingly left in his way. The only male volunteer in our group helped support him there, a service that the man gladly accepted. Meanwhile, we decided to saturate the basin with enough water that the ants would leave the mud, or drown. That worked, but when Jaime returned to check on our progress he found three of us sitting forlorn and spattered in the dirt around the water spigot, trying to tie down the handle which wouldn't close. The other volunteer was helping the elderly man back from the outhouse. Confused, Jaime attempted to stifle the pouring faucet, speak to the old man, and put us back in order before he left again. While we wrestled with the water a pair of chickens had descended on our buckets and the old man had settled himself in a chair facing us, and proceeded to watch our progress on his stove.
Finally the proceedings became smoother, and although the work was still unusually difficult we settled into a rhythm. And I began to wonder about the old man. I wondered how he managed to live on this little farm, with no sight and limited mobility. I wondered if he was happy, when a trip to the bathroom took him the greater part of an hour. Later I found out that his wife was a good deal younger than him, and cared for her ailing husband. That made me wonder about the wife, and how her life differed from other women in that pueblo - was it consumed with caring for her husband, or was it less work or more joy than at seemed? What I was most curious about was why the old man was so content to watch us for a hour, although he could not understand us and probably could only barely make out our foreign forms. Yet he watched, with a hearty grin on his face: a look of pure joy.
Later, in Spanish class, I asked about the existence of elder homes in Peru. My teacher explained that they have them, but those that enter die quickly. Confused, I asked if this was a reflection of the quality- she responded that while the quality could be quite good, when a man like the one we had encountered has spent so long listening to the birds that chirp outside his home, or the river that runs through his land, or his wife chattering to him about whatever (whether he fully understands or not), moving him to a nursing home is a fatal mistake. Taken out of his habitat, he would die quickly. It was then that I realized why he sat their and smiled- even though he couldn't understand us, we were company. Even though he sat and watched us make a mess of his house, we were entertainment. He knew his life on the farm well, and slippery trek to the bathroom forgotten, he has comfortable and happy.
But the aspect of the day that I wondered about the most was how he was when he was younger. Now, we saw him as old, blind, decrepit. All we knew of him were his ailments. But he could only have been this way for a few years. I wondered how his younger self would feel if he could foresee this moment- a bunch of foreign students entering into the home that he had carefully constructed, in which he had perhaps used his big smile and wit to land his much younger wife and subsequently provided for her so that when he fell ill she would have the means to maintain the house. I wonder how the younger, more virile version of this jovial grandfather would feel knowing that we saw him and constructed our judgments of the situation based on this version of him. That we never knew him in his youth. He no doubt spent many years toiling in the rocks of Ccotohuincho, coaching a life out of the arid desert. Yet we have no idea about THAT man, only the old one in front of us, picking his way across the floor. Ninety percent of his life has most likely been filled with labor, self-sufficiency, and perhaps passion. Yet we will never know of that side. I wondered how different the way we saw him was from how he sees himself. I know that when I am old and my health is failing I will still think of myself as the 20 year old who built stoves in Peru, as the adolescent who likes adventure. But how will others see me? Most likely as we see the man - weak and vulnerable. He is a shadow of the man he used to be, yet we can never know that other man for comparison. I very much wish I could know what this old man was like in his prime, and what would be his thoughts about his position today.
Posted by Brynne Sekerak
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